Feedback: Cars that go clippetty clop

WE HAVE run several stories in recent months about signifiers that relate to obsolete concepts – either in the form of words, such as blueprints which were blue once but aren’t any more (25 June), or pictures, such as a sign showing a steam locomotive to warn of the proximity of a railway carrying modern trains (14 May), or gestures such as the “air signature” used to order the bill in a restaurant (7 May). Now Daniel Smith directs us to a discussion on BBC news about obsolete sounds that are deliberately fabricated (bbc.in/safesounding).

Engineers, the article says, have taken to tweaking acoustics to make us feel good about products that are being sold to us, or for the sake of safety. Examples include the rigged “satisfying clunk” of a car door closing, the faked noise of a shutter on a digital camera, or the artificially created “engine sound” of a silent electric car that warns pedestrians of its approach.

Daniel notes that in this way, sounds that would otherwise be lost in the relentless progress of technology are preserved. “Imagine,” he says, “if this concept of familiar sounds had been developed earlier. Would cars all make the sound of horses’ hooves instead of the newfangled and confusing drone of an internal combustion engine?”

Profiling port manager Don Mann, The Oregonian mentions his time on an ice-breaker ship that “crossed the North Pole three times and the South Pole once”. Ken Lassesen wants pictures